


Statuary

by Zai42



Series: October 2020 [15]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Crystallization, Curses, M/M, Whump, petrification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27022768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zai42/pseuds/Zai42
Summary: Another day, another curse.Prompt: crystals
Relationships: Oscar Wilde & The Party, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Series: October 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946893
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42
Collections: A Wilde Ride October Collection





	Statuary

It started as a stiffness when he got out of bed, pain so distant as to be easily dismissed as stress, a poor night’s sleep. Nothing out of the ordinary. Barely worth commenting on.

Except it lasted. It grew worse throughout the day, even, to the point Azu noticed. “Is something wrong, Wilde?” she asked. “You seem unwell.”

Wilde waved her off. “Nothing,” he said, still, for the moment, convinced he was telling the truth. “I’m not as young as I once was,” he added, aiming for flippant. Azu frowned at him but accepted this easily enough.

It was just before dinner that it came to a head. He was sitting at the table, peeling potatoes for Zolf in companionable quiet. Then he stood, and pain lanced up his leg, so sharp and sudden that he cried out as he collapsed, shaking and shocked. Zolf was at his side in a heartbeat, lifting him into a princess carry and setting him back on his chair, brows furrowed with worry. “Left leg,” Wilde managed, teeth grit against pain that seemed to have been waiting for its chance to roar to life.

Zolf rolled up his pant leg and hissed through his teeth, eyes going wide with shock. “What is it,” Wilde asked tightly. Then, when Zolf didn’t reply, didn’t look at him: _“Zolf.”_

“I uh,” Zolf said. “I should get the others.”

Wilde snarled in frustration and leaned over to look. His ankle, just above the cuff of his bright green socks, had gone grey, and when Wilde ran the pad of a finger over it, it was cold and stiff, its angles hard and inorganic. He shifted his leg and his skin caught the light.

“This is impossible,” he whispered.

“Well, it’s happenin’,” Zolf replied, eyeing the cold granite. The line where stone ended and skin began was stark and unnatural, lined with crystal formations. “I gotta tell them,” Zolf said. “You need help.”

“Yes,” Wilde said, dazed. “Yes, I think - yes.” 

Zolf gave him one last worried look over his shoulder, but Wilde didn’t notice, too busy running his thumb over his leg, skin then stone then skin again, back and forth like he could rub it away.

* * *

“This - this isn’t how this _works,”_ Hamid said, wide-eyed. “This shouldn’t be _happening.”_

“Oh, fantastic input,” Wilde said acidly, tugging his leg away. “How comforting to know this is _unusual_ petrification.”

“Wilde,” Zolf said mildly; Wilde huffed and curled in on himself, but stopped grumbling. “So how does this work, then?” Zolf asked, turning to Hamid. “How do we fix it?”

“Well,” Hamid said, “in _theory,_ as long as you had all the pieces together - ”

_(“Pieces,”_ Wilde groaned into his hands.)

“ - it’s a simple enough fix,” Hamid continued, wringing his hands and shooting Wilde a look. “But - but it’s an instant effect, normally, not something...ongoing.”

“Would it hurt to try?” Azu asked, frowning slightly.

“Well...I don’t know,” Hamid said. “Probably not?”

Zolf and Azu exchanged glances, shrugged, turned to look at Wilde. He sighed and waved a hand. “Do it,” he said. “Might as well.”

So Azu knelt, taking his leg in both hands. She closed her eyes. A faint pink glow suffused the room, and for a moment, Wilde sagged, sinking into relief like a warm bath.

And then he screamed.

He smothered it quickly, falling forward; Azu caught him, looking stricken, and Wilde rolled up both trouser legs with shaking hands, then laughed, high and unhinged.

The rock formations had spread, up both legs now, nearly to the knee. Above him, he heard Zolf spit a curse, but Wilde only cackled.

* * *

He was in Cel’s lab, sitting on one of their tables, watching tiredly as they examined his legs. “It really is fascinating,” Cel muttered, mostly to themselves. “I mean, it’s terrible, obviously, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this, before.”

“So I’ve heard,” Wilde said, leaning back on his elbows. He stared up at the ceiling. “So you don’t know how to fix it, then.”

“I’m sure I can figure something out!” Cel said brightly. “Now, would you be comfortable with giving me a sample?”

Wilde looked at them blankly. “Of...”

“Just a, uh, rock scraping, as it were.”

Zolf had given him a generous serving of whiskey back in the kitchen, to get him to stop laughing, and in spite of the honey-warm buzz still in his veins, Wilde felt the urge to start up again.

* * *

It spread slowly, at first, as long as no one tried to heal it. It was a creeping ache, like growing pains, like stiffness from sitting for too long. If he moved it got worse. Then it reached his hips, and moving became somewhat less of a problem.

“You’re going to be all right,” Cel said, with that frantic, determined optimism Wilde has only seen them display under truly dire circumstances. “I think - I am 99.8% sure - that I’ve discovered an antidote, it’s really quite simple, I just had to - ”

“Cel,” Wilde said, exhausted. “Just give it to me.”

“Right,” said Cel, and Wilde braced himself. “Technically I could give it to you now, in theory, but it wouldn’t _help,_ so much, it would, in fact, completely destroy the lining of whatever parts of your digestive system it came into contact with before you choked on the fumes, but, I just need one ingredient in order to synthesize it in a way that will make it, uhm, fit for. You know. Human consumption.”

“I imagine it’s something exotic and absurdly difficult to obtain?” Wilde asked flatly.

“It’s not so much...” Cel paused. “It’s all right,” they said. “We’re going to take care of it. Or, Zolf and I are going to go take care of it, then come back when it’s done. Hamid and Azu will be down in a minute to keep you company!”

* * *

His fingers ached before they went stiff, and Wilde let the cards he was holding flutter to the floor. _A shame,_ he thought vaguely, _that was a flush._

Hamid and Azu were at his side in an instant. “Oscar?” Hamid asked.

“F-fine,” Wilde mumbled. He had grown used to the pain below his waist - his feet had gone numb some time ago, and though the spread of the crystals still hurt, it had slowed as it had crawled along his stomach. He held up his hand, watched as tiny rock formations gathered at his fingertips, accumulating like ice on a window pane. “This feels morbid,” he said, trying to give the others a flippant grin and, he suspected, missing the mark rather widely.

“I’m sure they’ll be back soon,” Azu said. “Do you want us to check on them?”

“No,” Wilde said, waving her off. “I’m sure...I’m sure they’re on their way.”

* * *

Night fell, and it was hard to breathe. After his hands had gone stiff and useless, they’d abandoned card games; Azu had read to him for a while, but Wilde had to admit he hadn’t been the best listener.

The infection had spread up his chest. Thick spines of crystal jutted out in a cluster over his heart, and each breath felt like it was drawn through a heavy cloth, sending stabs of pain into his lungs. His hands had long since petrified; he could only lie where he had been laid, across the table in Cel’s lab, staring up at the ceiling or, with great effort, turning his head to look around the room.

“They’re on their way back now,” Hamid said from somewhere to his left. Wilde heard, more than felt, the click of Hamid’s claws as he touched his arm. “I just spoke to them, Cel says it’s ready, they’ll be back by morning.”

“M-morning,” Wilde repeated, voice rasping and ragged. “I should apologize for snapping at you.”

“Apologize when you can look me in the eye,” Hamid said firmly, and Wilde laughed weakly.

“Promise,” he said.

* * *

_he wants to scream but he can’t breathe, he can’t think, he can only focus on the splitting, stabbing, crackling pain, his head his skull his eyes are crunching to pieces, eroding, crumbling, it hurts it hurts it hurts it is cold and dark and it hurts, it’s so so cold_

  
There was warmth, and then acidic heat, searing through him like a wildfire, and Wilde snapped back to consciousness with a hiss, back arching off the table, reaching desperately for something to hold on to.

Two sets of hands held him down. “Easy, easy!” Zolf’s voice said. “Cel, is this normal?”

“By definition, no!” Cel said. “Nobody’s ever done this before!”

Wilde clawed at the hands holding him down without quite connecting them with the voices above him.

“Fuck’s sake, Wilde, knock it off - well is it _working?”_

“Yes, yes, I - definitely think so?”

_“Yes or you think so!?”_

Wilde sucked in a heaving gasp of air, then fainted before he managed to scream.

* * *

He awoke to Zolf pumping him so full of healing energy it made him dizzy. Wilde waved him off dazedly, then held his hand in front of his eyes and flexed his fingers. “Did you fix it?” he slurred, looking up again. “Did you save me?”

“Fuck,” Zolf breathed, sagging against Wilde’s side. “Thought we were gonna have to prop you up in the garden.”

Wilde hummed, flexed his hands experimentally. “Would you have made a fountain out of me?” he asked.

Zolf pulled him up into a sitting position, wincing in sympathy at the loud pops of Wilde’s joints. “Had a spot picked out and everything.”

“Well,” Wilde said, “I’m sorry to have ruined your plans.”

He still hurt, distantly. And Zolf, where he had a steadying hand on Wilde’s back, was shaking. Wilde took his free hand in his own, hesitated, then thought _well fuck it, I was a statue today,_ and brought it to his lips. Then, remembering suddenly, he said, “I promised Hamid I’d apologize for my earlier behavior when I was no longer strictly decorative.”

Zolf laughed weakly. “Should I turn you back, then?” he asked. “Or do you think your ego’s up to it?”

“I’ll struggle through,” Wilde said. He accepted Zolf’s offered arm and stood, swaying slightly, pins and needles running up his legs. “Thank you, Zolf,” he said, soft and sincere, clinging to him for support. “I’m not just saying that because you’re the only thing holding me up right now,” he added.

“Don’t worry,” Zolf said, “if I thought you were, I’d’ve dropped you.”


End file.
